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June 3, 2009 – “Classifoods”

Here’s another interesting approach to marrying editorial content with advertising in a print newspaper. This kind of coupling of content with ads has made Google rich – now here’s an example of a print paper – the paper serving the Bar Harbor, Maine area – melding features with local food advertising.

ELLSWORTH: The Ellsworth American and the Mount Desert Islander today launch a new advertising vehicle for people who grow, raise, sell, eat or admire food. That vehicle is a classified ad that, instead of appearing in the Classified Advertising section of the newspaper, is published in the Arts section where the weekly food, restaurant, recipe and wine features appear. It’s a new concept “marrying the ad to the news content.”

New concepts call for new names, so we have dubbed these new ads – Classifoods.

Here’s a really new concept: the ads are free this month. Free ads are one per customer per week.

General Manager Terry Carlisle cooked up the idea after attending a workshop in Boston at the annual New England Press Association (NEPA) convention in February.

At the NEPA convention this year, one of the presenters was encouraging us to think outside the box using classifieds as an example. Why do they all have to run in the back of the newspaper? Why not marry them with their news content if that makes sense? He showed an example of a successful food classified page that was running in the Lifestyle section of a newspaper next to the food page.

It was a recipe for experimentation.

To introduce Classifoods to readers and advertisers, the newspapers are offering the ads for free for the month of June. After that, regular classified rates apply.

Any food-related goods and services can appear in Classifioods – from seeds that grow into food to kitchen sinks where we clean up after a meal. Our first issue features a wide variety of foods, including pet foods.